Books, Magazines, Film, Music, Art, Etc.

The Longevity Book

I’m back. With another review of a celebrity book: Cameron Diaz’s The Longevity Book that follows on the heels of her The Body Book.

It doesn’t go on sale yet. It’s on an embargo at the library so it can’t be checked out until a certain date. As with all these embargoed books I read them before they go on sale and before they’re able to be checked out by library patrons.

The one good point about Cameron Diaz’s book is that she talks about menopause. I’ll be 51 this spring. She goes into an overview of what happens like hot flashes and cold sweats.

Ladies: I tell you: that accounts for why suddenly at nine o’clock at night I’m heated up and ten minutes later I’m breaking out in a cold sweat.

I skimmed only the sections of the book that interested me.

The Kate Hudson book Pretty Happy I liked more even with its numerous drawbacks like detailing how to go on a cleanse. I don’t do cleanses. I don’t think they’re necessary or ultimately healthy. And mostly because if I want to eat a couple of macaroons, I’m going to have the macaroons.

To be honest: there was nothing exceptional about the new Cameron Diaz book as compared to Christiane Northrup’s bible The Wisdom of Menopause. And the Mayo Clinic has a great DVD on menopause that I’m going to buy instead of reading the Northrup book (which I tried to read straight through and ended about 100 pages short of the end. The book clocked in at near 900 pages.)

I hear–you can ask your doctor to be safe–that taking two 400 mg Vitamin E pills helps with hot flashes. A woman who’s a few years older than me told me this.

Again: I do wish ordinary woman who want to speak their mind for others to hear would get book deals not just celebrities and other famous people.

Yes: I skimmed only the sections of The Longevity Book that interested me. What I read was impressive in its own way.

The book reports on–and I’ve reported elsewhere on–how maintaining social connections and friendships and other relationships as we head into our sunset years accounts for having better health and happiness.

Right now I’m reading sentence-by-sentence an utterly fascinating memoir that I’ll talk about early next week after I’m done reading it.

Right now I just want to crawl under the covers with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s.